Endless Loop: Piume Di Cristallo

Have you ever had one of those songs that gets stuck in your head for days…weeks…years? Sure you have. These are the songs that always make the cut. The songs on repeat. We all have them. I have a ton. Welcome back to Endless Loop.

“Piume Di Cristallo” by Ennio Morricone

I’m going to be out of the office next week, right during my most favorite time of the year, and so it seems like today is the day for a Halloween-themed entry into the annals of songs I ceaselessly entertain myself with. Halloween has long been my favorite holiday, the combination of autumn weather, horror movies, ghosts and ghouls, pumpkin ales, and adolescent debauchery being things I would take in full time if it were so possible. And I used to pride myself on my costume effort before the boys came along and the focus shifted to them instead. Some of my past disguises include:

Kurt Cobain

Hunter S. Thompson

Token Goth Guy

Shaggy from Scooby-Doo

Edgar Frog (Corey Feldman from The Lost Boys)

A Mad Scientist

A Bear

A Werewolf

Courtney Love

And for my sons:

Chewbacca

Freddy Krueger

Ash (from Evil Dead)*

A White Tiger

A Vampire

A Skunk

This year, it’s looking like I’ll be repeating the werewolf, my wife as a witch, and my boys as ninja and some cartoon character named Catboy respectively.

Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that I love, love, love Halloween and everything that comes with it. But let’s get to the music.

From a man who really needs no introduction and whose catalog of work has been inspiring me for years and years and years, Italian Maestro Ennio Morricone’s score for Dario Argento’s directorial debut, 1970’s The Bird with The Crystal Plumage, ranks as one of my all time favorites. Though he’s most well known for scoring spaghetti westerns, Morricone actually provided the soundtrack to quite a few giallos as well, utilizing his usual penchant for combining and mixing styles into something uniquely his own. The Bird with The Crystal Plumage is no different, shades of psychedelia and choral harmonies crafting a surreal and unnerving tapestry of sound, and very notably so on the haunting “Piume Di Cristallo.”

So let’s all enjoy some wonderfully eerie music from a master of the craft and take in these last few days of the Halloween season before we have to wait all over again. Watch a scary movie. Eat some candy. Carry out that murder you were thinking about. And have a Happy Halloween.

From a bunker somewhere in Central Texas, Thomas H. Williams spends most of his time with his wife, his two sons, and his increasingly neurotic dog. He listens to a lot of music, drinks a lot of excellent beers, and gets out from time to time. For even more shenanigans, visit heavenisanincubator.blogspot.com.